Wondering where your favourite F1 driver got their start in motorsport? Odds are it was in one of the many kart series around the world. We give you the lowdown on the feeder discipline to junior single-seaters as the most prominent series, the FIA Karting European Championship, kicks off its 2025 season.

By Marco Albertini

Karting, like single-seater racing, takes place year-round all over the world. While only a few hundred drivers compete in junior single-seaters every year, there are thousands of competitors across the many levels of karting, and some events have upwards of 100 entries.

Almost all the professional and junior drivers you know have come up through the karting ranks. Previous senior-level European karting champions include Jarno Trulli, Jenson Button, Max Verstappen and Andrea Kimi Antonelli, while Sebastian Vettel, Sébastien Buemi, Nyck de Vries, Alex Albon, George Russell and Lando Norris all won titles in junior karting.

Classes

The alphabet soup of karting classes may be difficult to understand at first. Broadly speaking, they can be divided into two these days: gearbox karting and direct-drive karts.

KZ and KZ2 are the two gearbox classes in common use today. KZ has higher speeds; more experienced karters, including a number of professional factory racers; and open chassis and gearbox rules. KZ2 has harder tyres and requires hand-operated gear shifting. Both disciplines have a minimum age of 15 in FIA-sanctioned competition.

Direct-drive karts are headlined by the Original Kart class, better known as OK, in which karters aged 14 or older compete in push-started karts. These share a philosophy with the OK-Junior category, in which competitors from 12 to 14 years of age are eligible to compete. These classes were formerly known as KF and KF2; the classes retain the distinction between senior and junior.

Many single-seater prospects these days jump from direct-drive karting to F4 cars, and some forgo senior karting entirely by stepping up to cars aged 14 in series not sanctioned by the FIA. Others prefer to gain experience in the more mechanically challenging shifter karting before making the move up. Verstappen was a world and European title winner in KZ in 2013 just before jumping up to European F3, while F4 record-setter Freddie Slater won the European KZ2 title in 2023 ahead of his own step up to single-seaters.

With costs rising for both OK and OK-J, cheaper, nationally focused direct-drive classes were launched in 2023 in OK-N and OK-NJ. These follow a similar structure to OK and OK-J, but the karts require less maintenance.

Below junior karting, there are various categories, usually called micro or cadet karts ranging from Mini 60 to Honda Cadets. These series lay out the first steps into karting for karters aged 11 or less.

Promoters and championships

FIA Karting, also called the CIK-FIA, is the governing body for worldwide karting, and it runs the flagship karting events worldwide. The FIA Karting European Championship is the series most karters want to win – other than the standalone FIA Karting World Championship, of course – and is home to much of the next generation of F4 drivers.

This year, the FIA Karting European Championship for OK and OK-J visits Campillos in April, Portimão in May, Viterbo in June and Rødby in early August before the Karting World Championship race at Kristianstad in September.

To prepare, many European Championship karters compete in the RGMMC-organised Champions of the Future Euro Series, which holds events at the same track the weekend before each European Championship race. Last year, the Champions of the Future name expanded to the COTF Academy Program, in which F1 Academy’s nine Discover Your Drive karters compete. The Swiss organiser also runs the IAME Winter Cup and Euro Series and promotes the karting disciplines in the FIA Motorsport Games.

Italian American Motor Engineering, better known as IAME, started out making kart engines but more recently branched out to running its own single-engine championships. These include the IAME Euro Series, IAME Asia Series and the IAME Warriors Final along with various national championships. Most IAME categories bear the X30 prefix.

Another engine maker, Rotax, also followed a similar route. The Austrian company has organised various Rotax Max Challenge series and the annual Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals, the flagship contest.

Several national events and championships are also widely attended. Italy’s WSK-organised events are particularly well attended, and drivers such as Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Logan Sargeant and Antonio Giovinazzi have all won one or more of the WSK Euro Series, wintertime Super Master Series, standalone Champions Cup and year-end Final Cup. The English, German, French and Japanese national karting scenes also have high rates of churning out talent.

Across the pond, the most notable karting event is the SuperKarts! USA’s SuperNationals, held each November in Las Vegas, Nevada. Drivers such as Jake Dennis, George Russell, Logan Sargeant and Lance Stroll have all won at least once in the flagship SKUSA event.

Notable teams and chassis

In karts, teams such as Birel, Sodikart, CRG and Tony Kart all make their chassis in house and let customer teams purchase them. Forza Racing, for instance, use Tony Kart’s chassis, while Monster K use CRG’s.

Single-seater teams have also competed in karts. Notably, F2 and F3 frontrunners ART Grand Prix ran in karts until 2014, when they merged their operations with Birel to create Birel ART, which runs to this day.

Last year, Van Amersfoort Racing also partnered with the Italian marque to create VAR by Birel, a single-kart operation in OK with Noah Wolfe as its only entrant.

In 2023, Prema Racing also joined the karting scene with Kart Republic running the operations. Current FRegional and F4 racers Yuanpu Cui, Kean Nakamura-Berta and Alex Powell were all part of the Prema karting line-up in 2023.

Notable karters

F1 junior programmes are increasingly looking further down the motorsport ladder to identify potential prospects for their F1 teams. This phenomenon also extends to karters’ parents and managers, who view academy affiliation as a way to boost their youngsters’ marketability and development paths.

McLaren’s Dries van Langendonck; Williams’ Sara Matsui; and Mercedes’ trio of James Anagnostiadis, Kenzo Craigie and Luna Fluxá are all competing full-time in senior karting. Red Bull’s Rocco Coronel will continue his foray in OK in parallel with his Ginetta Junior Championship commitments.

In OK-J, meanwhile, Williams will be represented by both Dean Hoogendoorn and Will Green, Alpine by Ilie Crisan, Mercedes by Many Nuvolini, and Ferrari by its first karting recruit in several years in Noah Baglin. All of those karters bar Fluxá and Craigie have been recruited since the start of 2024.

Perhaps the most notable karter on this weekend’s European championship entry list not affiliated with F1 is Joe Turney, a former British F4 racer turned karting star and the defending European champion in the OK class. The factory Kart Republic racer is one of the veteran professional karters against whom F1 prospects, including those in academies, measure themselves.

Weekend structure

Most karting weekends take place over four days. On Thursday, there are pre-event tests. On Friday there are practice sessions followed by qualifying sessions divided into groups to make an overall qualifying table.

At the end of the qualifying sessions, competitors are assigned a letter, cycling through letters from A to as high as H depending on the number of entrants. These letters correspond to their heat group, and they face off in pairs against other heat groups from late Friday through Saturday. The points scored in the heats determine racers’ starting positions for the finals or super heats. In competitions with many entrants – usually more than 72 – heats also determine who qualifies for the super heats. 

The super heats are usually held on Sunday morning. Those are additional opportunities to earn points towards qualification for the final, which is composed of 36 competitors, later on Sunday.

The final ultimately determines the winner of each event. They also award the big points towards championships, but in some karting events, heats or super heats also award a lower number of points.

How can I watch?

All FIA Karting sessions will have timing on Kartcom and FIA Karting Saturday and Sunday’s action from those events will be broadcast live on the FIA Karting YouTube channel. Most other major regional and international championships also stream their races.

Header photo credit: FIA Karting / KSP Reportages